In the northern New Jersey town of Mahwah, an expanding Orthodox community has attempted to set up an eruv, a sort of legal fiction that allows for carrying out of doors on Shabbat. The town’s government recently ruled that the eruv—which consists of small pieces of white PVC piping attached to utility poles—violated local zoning laws. On Wednesday some parts of the eruv were vandalized. The editors of NorthJersey.com take issue with Mahwah’s decision:

Signs are prohibited on trees, rocks, and utility poles in Mahwah. [But an] eruv is a reasonable religious accommodation; it is not a sign. . . . Orange & Rockland Utilities, which owns the poles, has given permission. . . to install the pipe.

We understand some may not like the aesthetics of the piping, just as some people don’t like solar panels attached to utility poles. But, first, these are utility poles, not majestic oaks. And second, the ability to worship without government interference is a constitutional right. . . .

Mahwah’s Mayor Bill Laforet said [that the eruv decision] “sends a very strong message to those who choose to violate our sign ordinances.” It sends a very different kind of strong message about Mahwah. . . . An online petition against the eruv, titled “Protect the Quality of Our Community in Mahwah,” lists over 1,200 supporters. Some of the comments are ugly: “This group of people are known for entering a community and taking it over for their own advantage. They are known for taking a lovely community and turning it into a run-down, dirty, unwanted place to live.”

That is not a comment against signs, but one against Orthodox Jews. Some white PVC piping is not an overt expression of any faith. It is not akin to placing crosses on public structures; it’s plastic piping on utility poles with permission from the owners of the utility poles. . . . The eruv should stay.

Yasir Arafat was often quoted as saying that his “strongest weapon is the womb of an Arab woman.” That is, he believed the high birthrates of both Palestinians and Arab Israelis ensured that Jews would eventually be a minority in the Land of Israel, at which point Arabs could call for a binational state and get an Arab one. Using similar logic, both Israelis and their self-styled sympathizers have made the case for territorial concessions to prevent such an eventuality. Yet, Yoram Ettinger argues, the statistics have year after year told a different story:

Contrary to the projections of the demographic establishment at the end of the 19th century and during the 1940s, Israel’s Jewish fertility rate is higher than those of all Muslim countries other than Iraq and the sub-Saharan Muslim countries. Based on the latest data, the Jewish fertility rate of 3.13 births per woman is higher than the 2.85 Arab rate (since 2016) and the 3.01 Arab-Muslim fertility rate (since 2020).

The Westernization of Arab demography is a product of ongoing urbanization and modernization, with an increase in the number of women enrolling in higher education and increased use of contraceptives. Far from facing a “demographic time bomb” in Judea and Samaria, the Jewish state enjoys a robust demographic tailwind, aided by immigration.

However, the demographic and policy-making establishment persists in echoing official Palestinian figures without auditing them, ignoring a 100-percent artificial inflation of those population numbers. This inflation is accomplished via the inclusion of overseas residents, double-counting Jerusalem Arabs and Israeli Arabs married to Arabs living in Judea and Samaria, an inflated birth rate, and deflated death rate.

The U.S. should derive much satisfaction from Israel’s demographic viability and therefore, Israel’s enhanced posture of deterrence, which is America’s top force- and dollar-multiplier in the Middle East and beyond.